Purpose
A payment-by-results (PbR) financing scheme supported by the Government of Tanzania and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (formerly the UK Department for International Development) is providing targeted financial incentives to Local Government Authorities (LGAs) to expand rural water access in eligible districts of Tanzania. The objective of the PbR scheme is to increase the availability and sustainability of functional rural water points and to shift the emphasis towards long-term sustainability. This involves output-based incentives, the aim of which is to strengthen the focus on maintaining existing water points (and rehabilitating old ones), rather than focusing only on the construction of new water points to increase coverage.
EDI Global was engaged to collect baseline data for two Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) evaluations: a performance evaluation of the PbR scheme itself and an impact evaluation of the PbR scheme’s complementary intervention.
Action
The baseline survey consisted of two components: the first component included a survey of water community groups in rural Tanzania, in which 1,096 villages were surveyed across 137 rural LGAs, and a distribution points survey that mapped water point GPS, and water flow and coliform tests from 1,756 samples. The second component of the study involved 2,380 interviews with civil servants at LGAs, and regional and central offices, as well as river basin agencies. This survey took place in all 26 regions of mainland Tanzania.
Impact
The results of the impact evaluation of the PbR financing scheme are not yet available as the endline survey is planned for 2023. The endline survey will focus on the component involving the water community groups and the mapping of all water distribution points in the same 393 rural communities surveyed at the baseline in 2018. The learning reports on the implementation of the PbR scheme, led by Ecorys, are available here.
